When Craig Venter created a synthetic microbe, he inserted a passage from James Joyce. Guess who’s upset? Joyce’s estate, claiming copyright infringement:
In order to distinguish their synthetic DNA from that naturally present in the bacterium, Venter’s team coded several famous quotes into their DNA, including one from James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist of [...]

A McDonald’s restaurant in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, has a sophisticated anti-theft device. It sprays robbers with a fine mist containing artificial DNA that can be seen under ultraviolet light:
The new system involved an employee-activated device that sprays a fine, barely visible mist laced with synthetic DNA to cover anyone in its path, including criminals, and [...]